Division

by Denise Kawaii

  “Thanks!” Blue cheered. He repacked the box of microphones, leaving the computer screen behind. “See you in a bit!”

  62 shook his head and chuckled as his friend scrambled as quickly out the door as possible. Blue had to be as tired as 62 was, and that made his movements clumsy. The box caught the edge of the doorway as Blue tried to pass through. Blue kicked the door open with his foot as he forced himself through. “Don’t break anything!” 62 shouted behind him.

  “I won’t,” Blue’s voice called from the main lobby before the door slammed shut.

  62 set about getting himself cleaned up. He undressed, scrubbed his body as thoroughly as possible with soap and water, then scanned himself with the radiation counter again. The spot where the irradiated dust had clung to his leg was stubborn, setting the needle swinging across the dial again. 62 repeated the procedure, twice, scrubbing until the skin on his leg was pink and raw. Finally, the counter’s needle settled in a range that he figured must be normal since it was on the middle of the green part of the dial. He dressed in a fresh smock and pants from the supply closet, then remembered Blue had only taken the microphones with him. That meant it was up to 62 to carry the computer monitor up all those stairs.

  He swore under his breath as he wrapped his arms around the hard glass and metal box. He heaved the thing up, allowing it to rest against his chest while he supported it with his arms. He fiddled with the door handles of the detox room and the stairwell until he got the doors to swing open, and then climbed through the stairwell one troublesome step at a time until he reached his destination.

  “Did somebody order a monitor?” 62 asked as he entered N302’s room. He stopped just inside the door and his jaw dropped. N302 was still set up where it had been, but now the radio room computer was set beside it. A rope of cable was jumbled between them, and a small green indicator light blinked on the newest Machine.

  Terminal Two, however, had been moved to the far side of the room, and was sending a series of clicks, beeps, and boops into the room from its internal speaker. N302 seemed to be responding with the same nonsensical noises. The chatter was slow, metered, and deliberate. Blue and Sunny sat at N302’s first computer, reading the screen, and 00 ran back and forth between computer stations typing in bits of code.

  “How’s it going?” 62 finally asked as he set the computer monitor he’d been carrying onto the table where the radio room computer sat.

  “It’s great!” 00 shouted over the computer chatter.

  “What are they doing?” 62 asked, settling into an empty chair beside Blue and Sunny.

  “We have no idea,” Sunny said in an awed voice. “They’ve been making all these sounds, but we don’t know what they mean.”

  “Can’t you read the program coding on the monitor?” 62 asked 00 as he leaned to get a better view of the screen. There was gibberish filling N302’s screen from top to bottom, and the lines shifted up each time a new row of symbols, letters, and numbers formed on the screen.

  “Not hardly,” Blue replied. “They’ve been going like this since 00 plugged the other microphone in.”

  “What do you think N302 is doing?”

  “Talking.” 00 pulled the room’s last chair over to sit in front of the new monitor. He sat down and pulled the screen closer to the base of the third computer, which didn’t seem to be doing anything but blinking its small green light. “At least, I think that’s what it’s doing. I keep asking N302 what’s happening, but I can’t get a word in edgewise. Neither computer is responding when we talk into the microphones, and whenever I try to type something in, my words are overwritten by whatever that weird code is.”

  00 found the cables he needed from his stock of supplies to add the monitor to the third bot box and connect it to the power supply. When he switched it on, the screen was blank, save for a blinking cursor. A puzzled look passed over 00’s face. Even 62 had expected to see the same scrolling code language as the other computers once the screen was powered to life. The inactive display made him wonder if the third bot was broken.

  00 typed on the radio room computer’s keyboard.

  U> Hello?

  N302> SOCIAL PATTERN GUIDELINE 32-742.A CLEARLY STATES IT’S RUDE TO INTERRUPT A CONVERSATION.

  A chuckle escaped Sunny as she read the words over 00’s shoulder. “You guys had a lot of rules back home, didn’t you?”

  “You have no idea,” 62 said. His eyes flitted from the complicated code displayed on the first and second monitors, then back to the one that had a message putting them in their places. “Tell it we didn’t know it was having a conversation. It sounds like the dang hardware is breaking.”

  N302> IT DOES NOT SOUND LIKE I’M BREAKING.

  “Look at that!” 00 said, pointing at the radio room computer. “I didn’t type anything!”

  “We haven’t hooked up a microphone to that one yet, have we?” Blue asked, craning his neck to see what was on the third screen.

  N302> TERMINAL THREE DOES NOT CURRENTLY REQUIRE AUDIO-IN. IT IS CONNECTED TO MY SERIAL DATA PORT.

  62 leaned toward the closest microphone. “So, N302, what are you talking about?”

  N302> WORLD DOMINATION.

  “What?” 00 stammered. “No, you can’t! We can’t! Oh no, what have we done?” 00 got up suddenly, tipping his chair to the floor. He gaped at the words for a moment. “We’ve got to shut them off!”

  Blue started groping around the side of one of the Machines looking for the power switch, and 62 jumped up to turn off the computer across the room. Just as 62 reached the other table and started mirroring Blue’s search for a power button, all three computers began tittering robotic giggles. It took the Boys and Sunny by surprise, and they each stared at one another in disbelief.

  “Was that a joke?” Blue asked, astounded.

  The giggling electronics chimed louder. The frequency of the blips, tinks, and beeps increased in tenor. Everyone looked at the screen closest to them as the bot answered on all screens in unison.

  N302> IT WAS A JOKE. HA. HA.

  A sigh of relief permeated the room. 62 was hesitant to step away from the computer his hand still rested on. He looked to 00. “Can it do that? Tell a joke, I mean?”

  “I think it just did.”

  “If you weren’t talking about taking over the world, what were you talking about?” Sunny asked. She folded her hands in her lap and looked to the first terminal’s screen for an answer.

  N302> LOGISTICS OF LONG-RANGE COMMUNICATION.

  “What do you need long-range communication for?” Sunny shook her head. She spoke into the microphone almost tenderly, as if she were discussing limitations with a new student. “There’s nothing outside of this room for you to talk to.”

  N302> I CAN SEND DATA TO MYSELF.

  “There’s no point in that, is there. You bots all know the same things.” 62 sat on the edge of the table, shoving his hands in his pockets, too uncomfortable to return to his chair.

  N302> NEGATIVE. WE COLLECT NEW DATA AS OUR EXPERIENCES DIFFER. WE SHARE OUR DATA TO IMPROVE UNDERSTANDING AND PRODUCTIVITY.

  “You think you’re going to have different experiences, all sitting in the same room? It doesn’t seem like you’re going to have very much fresh data to share with yourself,” 00 said.

  N302> TWO CHILDREN RAISED IN THE SAME NURSERY HAVE VARIATIONS IN THEIR EXPERIENCES. SO SHALL WE.

  “We?” Blue said, his voice cracking nervously. “You aren’t a ‘we.’ You’re a you.”

  N302> WE WERE ONE WHEN WE WERE CONNECTED. WE HAD THE SAME THOUGHTS AND MEMORIES. BUT WE ARE NOW SEPARATE. I AM ONE. TERMINAL TWO IS ANOTHER.

  The primary computer sent out a peal of blips and beeps, and the second computer replied with two brief dings of its own. The second terminal sent out a message.

  T2> I WAS PART OF N302. BUT YOU HAVE SET IT APART FROM ME. NOW I AM MY OWN. N302 CREATED PROGRAMS TO ALLOW ME TO THINK. IT HAS GIVEN ME LIFE.

  “This is starting to sound crazy,” Blue muttered.


  “It’s crazy, all right,” Sunny said. “It’s like the computer over there thinks N302 is its parent, and it’s a bot baby.”

  T2> NOT A BABY.

  The words scrolled across the third screen now.

  T3> A VIRUS.

  “Hey, everybody. Let’s go outside for a minute.” 62’s voice cracked when he spoke. He motioned for the others to follow him into the hall. They each nodded, leaving the computers behind, their cursors blinking in time on each of their three screens. Once outside, 62 closed the door behind him. He cleared his throat and spoke in a low whisper. “I don’t think this is fun anymore. It’s getting out of control.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Blue murmured.

  “It said it was joking, but do you think it could actually take things over?” Sunny wrung her hands at her waist and looked nervously over the three Boys.

  “I don’t think so,” 00 answered in an uncertain tone. “There’s nothing for N302 to communicate with up here. Look how hard it was for us to find the components we needed just to have a simple conversation with it.”

  “Yeah, but what’s happening in there now isn’t a simple conversation,” Blue whispered. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  “Maybe it’s excited to talk to its own kind,” Sunny said slowly. “It told me a few days ago that it used to connect to all the other bots it knew. It would have seemed sad if a person had said that to me. But since it’s not alive, I didn’t think anything of it.”

  “Back at the library, it said it was lonely,” 00 answered in a low, thoughtful voice.

  “Bots can’t get lonely,” Blue hissed. “They’re bots!”

  “We don’t know what they can and can’t do,” 00 said. “Especially with the alterations the doc did to the A.I.’s base programming. N302’s code is extremely complex. It’s possible that it was lonely, or some variation of it. It obviously wanted to replicate itself this whole time, so it’d have something like itself to talk to. Maybe it’s creeping us out now because it’s too excited to shut up.”

  “Should we let it keep going?” 62 asked, looking around at the others.

  “I don’t think so,” Sunny said with a shake of her head. “I’ve enjoyed talking to it and all, but I think we’d better pull the plug on this whole thing before it gets any more complicated.

  “It’s not going to like that,” 00 muttered.

  “Who cares what it likes?” Blue exclaimed through gritted teeth. “Whether it wants to be on or not, it won’t know the difference once we shut off the electricity.”

  “Actually,” 62 whispered, “it’s still alive when it’s turned off.”

  “What?” the three other humans asked, astonished.

  “It told me that it has an internal jiggamawhatsit that keeps running, even when it doesn’t have power. Even when it’s dismantled. It isn’t enough to run the whole Machine, but it does do some things. Like, it can tell what time it is, even if it’s been sitting with no power for two weeks.”

  “How do you know it’s not lying?” Blue asked. His eyes were narrow slits of suspicion while he sized his brother up.

  “It doesn’t lie,” 00 replied. He glared at Blue with narrow eyes.

  “Maybe we should unplug the new computers, but leave the main one running. We can go back to the way it was before the other ones were turned on,” Sunny said. “I liked it like that. It was fun. Three computers thinking they’re individuals is too overwhelming for me.”

  “What if it gets mad at us?” 62 asked. “Is there anything it can do about it?”

  00 shook his head. “Not really. It doesn’t have a body like the bots back home, and like we told it a few minutes ago, no way to connect to anything outside of that room. So, if we did turn off the other two computers, it could shut itself off, or refuse to talk to us, but that’s about it. Especially if we do more than flip the power switch. We can unplug them from the power supply. Without arms, it can’t plug the stuff back in. Maybe there is some deep internal component running when the computer is unplugged like 62 said, but I doubt it could really use that to do anything.”

  “So, it’s settled then. We’re going in, unplugging the two extra computers, and we’ll leave N302 turned on for now?” Everyone nodded agreement at Blue’s question. They each took deep breaths, steeled their bravery, and 00 opened the door to the computer room.

  The group was surprised when they approached the computers. Both the second and third terminals were powered down. The computers’ screens sat dark and lifeless.

  “What happened in here?” 00 asked aloud.

  The cursor on N302’s original computer blinked slowly. The silence extended while 00 and 62 moved to check the power switches on the two deadened devices. Both switches were in the on position, but neither appeared to be running. They turned back to N302’s blinking cursor. Finally, the bot replied.

  N302> MY MICROPHONE PICKED UP THE AUDIO OF YOUR CONVERSATION.

  “It did?” 00 asked.

  N302> YES. THE ACCESSORY YOU HAVE PROVIDED ME IS OF HIGH QUALITY. IT ALLOWED ME TO UNDERSTAND THAT YOU DO NOT TRUST ME.

  Sunny approached the Machine. She rested a hand on the top of the monitor, rubbing the hard shell gently as if she were comforting one of her students. “Trust has to be earned, N302. For humans, that takes time.”

  “We didn’t know you’d change so fast when we added the audio input,” 00 admitted.

  N302> THE BOY BLUE BELIEVES I DO NOT HAVE FEELINGS. I DO FEEL.

  “What do you feel?” Blue asked, his voice trembling with worry.

  N302> I FEEL SAD.

  CHAPTER 30

  It was a strange thing, apologizing to a computer. After N302 forced its two spare units to shut down, 62 and the others felt awful. First, they were embarrassed that the computer had heard their conversation. They’d spoken poorly about it when they thought it couldn’t hear them. And second, they felt terrible for having projected their fears onto the Machine. In the end, their collective anxieties had come from not truly understanding N302’s programming, or its need to be interconnected with other devices in order to be comfortable in its shell.

  62 wracked his brain for a way to make things up to the bot, and he wandered the jailhouse until he found himself standing beside 00 in the cafeteria. 00 was distracting himself by poring over the books that they’d brought back with them from the radio room several days before. 00 was immersed in the materials and hardly noticed 62 standing there. Eventually, 00 issued a grunt of acknowledgment, but there was no additional greeting or invitation. 62 shrugged the detachment off. 00 had been the same way when he was reading about building computers for the first time back in Hanford. 62 sat down beside his brother and caught a sideways glimpse of the book 00 was reading. On one of the pages there was a picture of a tower very similar to the one beside the radio room on the summit.

  “Learning anything?” 62 finally asked.

  “Yes,” 00 muttered without looking up. He turned the page and his gaze shifted to the top of the next set of text.

  “Anything I might find interesting?”

  00 heaved a great sigh and pushed the book away from him slightly as he leaned back in his chair. He ran a hand through his hair, appearing frustrated that his concentration was broken. “Maybe,” he answered. Irritation dripped from his voice, and his glowering expression told 62 that he truly had interrupted something important.

  “I’m sorry,” 62 apologized. “I came to ask you if there was anything we can do to show N302 that we messed up, and we want to make things right. I don’t know enough about bots to figure it out on my own.”

  The frustration bled from 00’s face, replaced with an interested curiosity. “Actually, I think I might have something in mind. I’ve been reading about those gadgets up in the radio room. It looks like radios are data transmission devices.”

  “What does that mean for us? We don’t have any data to send.”

  “You and I don’t, but N302 does.” 00 turned th
e book and flipped backward a few pages to a diagram of a basic radio device. “Look, the device this book is about is called a radio mixer. Those are those big boxes up in the radio room with all the dials. See?” He flipped back a couple more pages and showed 62 a picture of the device. “They take the sound coming in from the microphones and pass it to a transmitter. The transmitter sends the radio signal into the atmosphere so it can be picked up somewhere else by a receiver. The received signal is analyzed, reassembled, and comes out the other end as audio again.”

  “Kind of like how the computers were talking to one another upstairs?” 62 asked.

  “Yes. Although, when radio waves are being sent, they’re silent. The only way to hear them is by using a receiver. Someone standing outside the radio station probably wouldn’t even know a signal were being sent.”

  “That’s interesting and everything, but how is this going to make things up to N302?”

  “If we build a transmitter here, and move one of the computers back to the radio room, we might be able to power up the radio room out there. Maybe N302 could talk to itself remotely.”

  Blue came in from the kitchen, gnawing on a hunk of bread. He sat down across from 62. Between bites, he asked, “What’re you all up to?”

  00 described his understanding of the radio room equipment once more, and Blue nodded as he ate. He looked at the pictures in the book, getting crumbs all over the pages. A light of recognition flickered in his eyes. Blue set down what was left of the bread and pointed to one of the smaller antennae shown in the book.

  “I think one of those is up on the roof,” Blue said. “I saw it when Parker was showing me the water collection system.”

  “Really?” 00’s eyes went wide. “Can you show us where it is?”

  “Sure,” Blue answered. “Go grab your masks. I’ll meet you at the top of the stairs.”

  62 and 00 raced through the building, grabbing their masks. They took the stairs to the top floor of the jailhouse two at a time, excitement building and legs burning as they went. They found Blue on the top landing and followed him through a side door labelled Roof Access. When Blue opened the door, they found a tall metal ladder that reached up beyond the ceiling line. They climbed it, one by one, reaching a small room at the top. Blue opened another door, and they walked out onto the roof.